A horned grebe was flying over a large dark expanse and dove down into what it thought was water.

Turns out it was a parking lot and it ended up in a hospital.

That’s the story of the latest rescue at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center.

The bird, a kind of waterfowl, was migrating and strayed from the others. Franklin Klock, naturalist at the center, explained that they fly at night, and from a distance a paved lot looks just like water.

“People thought it had a broken wing because it was flopping in the parking lot,” Klock said. What it needed was water.

The incident happened in the Wilkes-Barre area and people called the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which brought the bird to the center in Summit Hill.

Grebes have feet on the back of their bodies, so they need water to stand up and lift off.

“It was just trying to stand up,” Klock said. “When they stand they are completely vertical.”

The feet are located to the back of the body by design, like a propeller on a boat. “They can dive more easier than a standard duck,” Klock said.

Grebes, which eat insects and small fish, have feet that are split-webbed and look like flat paddles.

From Northwest Canada, the small water bird that is a bit bigger than a robin migrates in small flocks at night. “When they see a parking lot or road that’s wet, they don’t understand and they come down and plop in the large, dark shiny area when everything else is covered with snow.”

The grebe rested up in the tank at the center for a few days and then was released in the Lehigh River. The center is on Mauch Chunk Lake, but that’s frozen over. Jerry McAward from Lehighton Outdoor Center helped Klock to find an open spot on the Lehigh to release the grebe last week.

“If he’s migrating, he needs water to take off,” Klock said.

It was important to get the bird back to the wild.

“We wanted to get him out of captivity,” Klock said. “The most stressful thing is to be grabbed and put in a cage.”

They made sure he was eating and recognized food. The first day they made sure he was calm and stable. Then they started introducing meal worms and krill. Just before he left he ate a dozen small goldfish from the pet store.

The environmental center is known for rehabbing birds.

“We don’t see a lot of waterfowl,” Klock said. “We’ve seen our share of Canada geese and snow geese.”

Our region is in the migration belt for a lot of birds, Klock said.

The center’s forte is raptors, but they’ve seen everything from the tiny hummingbird that was “drunk” because the solution in the feeder was fermented, to the majestic eagle hit by a car.

“Every bird has a story,” Klock said. Unfortunately, creatures can’t talk so the naturalists ask a lot of questions about were they were found and their actions at the time. “It’s not what’s wrong, but how did it happen. That’s as important as trying to heal it.”

Questions can lead, for example, to finding out that a bird has been exposed to a chemical from a lawn service. “We can’t ask them what’s wrong,” Klock said.

Luckily, people find creatures and get them help. People also donate to the environmental center to help fund rehabilitation. Klock said the center didn’t participate in the recent Betty White challenge on Facebook, but they received a couple checks anyway.

One family was visiting from Brooklyn, New York, and was so impressed with the center that the little girl raised money through a lemonade stand.

In September, they sent the money with a handmade card that said “Money for the birds.” That was the money the center used to feed and rehabilitate the grebe.